About ‘Pueblo a Pueblo’

Pueblo a Pueblo is a grassroots plan for organizing the production, distribution, and consumption of food that connects agricultural producers with urban dwellers. In so doing, the project breaks with the despotic dictates of the capitalist market.

Part 1: Food Is Not a Commodity, It’s a Human Right

In the first of this three-part piece in the Communal Resistance Series, Pueblo a Pueblo’s spokespeople talk about their organization’s history and its objectives.

Philosophy

Ricardo Miranda (a member of the Pueblo a Pueblo Coordination Team, was a PRV-FALN militant from an early age, a mathematician, and is a founder of the Jirajara Campesino Movement): Pueblo a Pueblo is an attitude, a plan, and a method that seeks to break the contradiction between the campo and the city, thus tearing down the walls that capital builds to keep sectors of the pueblo apart and isolated from each other.

The market system focuses on consumption, but production and distribution are erased from the equation. That is why Pueblo a Pueblo focuses on – and links – production, distribution, and consumption in what we call a “living economy” [economía viva]. This new kind of economy must develop outside of the dominant mechanisms of alienated consumption.

In real terms, what does this mean? The pueblo must be in control of land, seeds, and distribution mechanisms, but also of consumption. To do this we work with organized communities in barrios and in rural areas. On the city side of things, for example in the San Agustín barrio in Caracas, people come together to debate and determine the produce they need; this allows the rural producers associated with Pueblo a Pueblo to plan their production. As a result, when the crop is ready, a producers’ assembly will set the price of the products based on production costs. Then, the products are moved to collection centers. The final step is organized distribution events, such as those in San Agustín.

This does away with the intermediary, the capitalist operator that extracts value from the campesinos and overcharges those who purchase fruits and vegetables in the market. In doing so, prices go down but waste – and crop loss – also goes down.

As it turns out, the existing market is not planned, but rather the opposite: the only thing that drives the economy of capital is profit, not people’s needs. With Pueblo a Pueblo, production meets needs, and producers meet consumers in a “virtuous cycle” based on life and not capital.

For us food is not a commodity, it is a human right, so the plan brings together producers and consumers as subjects, not as pawns. In the period between the early days of Pueblo a Pueblo [around 2015] and the outbreak of the pandemic, we had nearly 300 planned distribution events. There, the prices were established in a transparent process where nobody got rich off the work of third parties.

Laura Lorenzo (a founder of the Jirajara Campesino Movement and the National Coordinator of Pueblo a Pueblo): Pueblo a Pueblo is a plan that brings working people from the campo and the city together to do away with the parasites that turn what some produce to live and others need to live into a commodity.

In legal terms, we are a foundation [Fundación Pueblo a Pueblo], but the Plan is not about locking people into a legal format, the Plan is about the free and conscious association of organized communities that decide to break away from the market’s dictates.

The Plan began in 2015. It had Carache, in the Andean state of Trujillo, as its home base for production, while El Panal Commune and later San Agustín Convive, two grassroots organizations in Caracas, became its urban counterparts.

Additionally, since 2021, we have been working with 270 schools to provide the produce they need to cook balanced meals for almost 100 thousand kids. This is particularly important at a time when the blockade has affected child nutrition. Pueblo a Pueblo does this, again, without intermediaries and with on-site accompaniment to diversify and balance school meals.

Salvador Salas (a member of the Pueblo a Pueblo Coordination Team): Capitalism separates the working class of the campo and of the city by building a seemingly insurmountable wall between the two. Everyone understands that, for working people, distribution is a problem in the capitalist system. The space of intermediation separates producers from consumers, but overcoming that separation is not easy.

To change this, we need to understand how capital builds this barrier. It’s not just about the intermediaries having the trucks, the silos, and the permits, which is important in itself. It’s also about the resources that are needed to grow a crop. To grow one hectare of tomatoes the producer needs seeds and other inputs, and the input packages have costs up in the thousands of dollars.

To finance the crop, a campesino will often be forced to turn to a capitalist in the distribution business; this person will deliver the inputs, but he also establishes terms that are very unfavorable to the campesino. Through these deals, campesinos lose control over the production process, and some will even come out with losses at the end of the cycle.

Gabriel Gil (a rural producer, an educator, and a member of the Pueblo a Pueblo Coordination Team): That is why our focus in Pueblo a Pueblo is campesino production and working-class consumption, without capitalist mediation – or distribution – in between the two.

I should add something else: campesino production is actually very efficient. According to the “Sociedad Científica Latinoamericana de Agroecología” [SOCLA], around 70% of all the fruits and vegetables consumed around the world are produced by campesinos. Other sources, such as reports from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], come up with similar figures. Venezuela is no exception.

Salvador Salas: Let’s look at our experience in Pueblo a Pueblo: between 2015 and 2020 the plan distributed four million kilos of produce that fed thousands of people. Most of that came from some 140 associated producers caring for some 100 hectares of land in total.

This goes to show you that campesino production – particularly in times when the crisis of capital combines with the imperialist siege against Venezuela – is not only efficient but also shows the way out. Conventional agriculture is environmentally and socially destructive, anti-sovereign, and the production per hectare tends to be lower than campesino production.

That’s why we argue for a model that is self-organized, does away with the market by integrating producers with consumers, and protects the environment, the campesino, and the consumer.

Gabriel Gil: The “Green Revolution,” which arrived here in the 1960s, began to generate a break between the campesino and nature. That is when industrial agriculture took root with a model that pollutes ground and water, and depletes the land of its nutrients. This model favors capital over campesino life – and life in general – and places corporate transnational interests over national and sovereign ones.

So, in addition to bringing down the barriers between the urban and rural working class, Pueblo a Pueblo is a plan that promotes the use of sovereign seeds and agroecological practices. Now, some may ask, is this viable? Yes, it is: while one hectare of genetically-modified, agro-industrial corn will yield up to 10 thousand kilos of corn, an organic, campesino-produced hectare can yield more, and the crop will be diversified.

Ana Dávila (a member of the Pueblo a Pueblo systematization and distribution team): Pueblo a Pueblo campesinos are part of the “Freely Associated Producers Network” [Red de Productores Libres y Asociados, REPLA], and while Carache is the rural epicenter of the plan, there are producers in several states, including Lara, Portuguesa, Yaracuy and Barinas. The campesinos produce for our “Consumers Network,” which brings together organized communities in Caracas, Miranda, La Guaira, Aragua, and Carabobo.

We have been at it for seven years. I would say that our most important achievement has been to bring the producer and the consumer together. When the campesino and the barrio dweller look each other in the eye, when they hear each other’s stories, class-based solidarity emerges.

Another one of our achievements has been the practice of establishing cost structures outside of the dictates of the system. What does this actually mean? The prices we employ are determined by the campesinos and not by the market, so they are not vulnerable to price drops. On the consumer’s end, they aren’t left to the whims of the market, where we often see prices go up for no good reason. This means that, with Pueblo a Pueblo, the producers get a fair payment for their crop, and consumers are able to access food at prices as much as 70% below the market.

As you can imagine, in a country that is under a brutal blockade imposed by the US, all this is very important.

Pueblo a Pueblo’s Guiding Principles

Gabriel Gil: To understand Pueblo a Pueblo, it’s important to talk about the five agroecological dimensions we promote, which are also universal principles.

For us, the first dimension is shortening the destructive distance between the campo and the city. In other words, it’s about establishing systems for the distribution of food without intermediaries, speculators, and mercantile actors. They [the intermediaries] are able to hijack production, because the capitalist landscape is designed to concentrate consumption on one end and production on the other.

That is why we work to generate systems where producers and consumers exchange without intermediaries and outside of market relations. In so doing, a solidarious, fraternal, class-based connection emerges between the producer and the consumer. This encourages the campesino to produce with more care, with a lower toxic load, while the city dweller overcomes the condition of being an alienated consumer and may even come to Carache [epicenter of Pueblo a Pueblo] to help with the crop.

Another one of our principles is the rescue of land and territories. When we talk about rescuing land, we are referring to actions that lead to campesinos having ownership of the land. When we talk about the rescue of territories, we are also pointing to cultural recovery.

What does this actually mean? If a group of campesinos takes control of a plot of land, that is good, but if they continue to produce with the conventional, highly polluting scheme, they are participating in the reproduction of the existing mode of life. That is why Pueblo a Pueblo promotes a cultural change where values such as solidarity, cooperativism, and communalization come back to the centerstage.

Then there is the principle of healthy food production. This means shifting gears and leaving behind the use of chemical pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. Now, some may say that this is not viable. However, according to Miguel Angel Altieri – an internationally renowned agroecology expert – conventional, biotechnological agriculture has yields below those of campesino agriculture. For example, a plot under mono-culture can yield 10 thousand kilos of corn per hectare, but a diversified campesino plot will yield plantain, yucca, and avocado (to give you an example) while systematically yielding a larger corn crop than mono-culture.

The conuco, the milpa, the chacra – which are names given to campesino production plots in Latin America – are the key to food sovereignty. Why? Because intensified care, diversification, crop rotation, and other non-industrial practices such as the use of animal traction, lead to high crop yields and don’t deplete the ground of its nutrients.

Another Pueblo a Pueblo principle is transforming campesino production. Traditionally, Indigenous, Black, and in general conuco producers take part of their crop and transform it into yams, flours, and other goods to provision their pantry. We want to scale up these kinds of practices so that producers have a built-in safety net, while consumers can acquire the transformed products. In so doing, the producers and the consumers are displacing ultra-processed foods that are harmful to our health and are controlled by the global agroindustrial complex.

Last but not least is organization. For non-conventional, healthy, non-market practices to succeed, organization is paramount. We need to promote a new perspective: people both in the city and campo need to organize around the alternative model, while institutions must promote a shift towards something that especially now, in a country under siege, is strategic: food sovereignty.

We often say that we are two steps away from hunger and one step away from food sovereignty. If we take the right course of action, we will flourish. If we don’t, the crisis may deepen.

The origins of Pueblo a Pueblo

Pueblo a Pueblo was formally born in 2015, but the organization’s cadres have a long history of struggle for rural justice.

Ricardo Miranda: You can trace the history of Pueblo a Pueblo back to the 1980s and the campesino struggle for the land. That’s when a long struggle in Los Cañizos-Palo Quemao in Yaracuy state brought university students from the city and campesino families together. The campesinos had been displaced from the land in the late 1950s, when thousands of hectares went into the hands of sugarcane-growing Cubans.

We resisted in a camp around Los Cañizos facing the brutal repression of the military and police forces, building barricades, organizing skirmishes against the military, and after being gassed with pesticides from an airplane, which killed cattle and left the young and elderly sick. Then we began to gather momentum. That’s when a journalist from Le Monde Diplomatique wrote an article about the “chemical warfare” against the Venezuelan pueblo.

That was followed by our storming of the Spanish and Mexican embassies in Caracas. Eventually, in 1991, [President] Carlos Andrés Pérez had to cede and the campesinos were, in principle, able to settle in their land.

I was there with many others, and the experience changed not only our understanding of the campesino struggle, but we also learned that projection in the media could generate widespread sympathy with rural struggles.

After 1991, as part of the Jirajara Campesino Movement [organization born in the Los Cañizos struggle], we realized that the intermediaries were sucking the life out of the campesinos in Los Cañizos, and we began with our first effort to do away with them. In Caracas, there was a group of priests committed to the people, so we set up several centers for the distribution of campesino production there.

In the beginning, it was hard, and we even had some loss of production. However, that is how we began to learn about distribution. Los Cañizos gave us many tools; there we learned about organization, about agrarian production, but we also learned that having control of the land isn’t enough. Thinking about the distribution and consumption end of the equation in social terms is also key. This is still a pending task in the Bolivarian Process.

But I would dare to say that our story goes back much further, to the 16th century, when Miguel de Buría and his partner Guiomar, who had been captured in Dahomey [currently Benin] and subsequently bought to Yaracuy, rebelled against the slaveholders and created cumbes or liberated territories. In those free lands, formerly enslaved and Indigenous people lived communally. For Pueblo a Pueblo, looking back at our communal past is very important.

But the origin of Pueblo a Pueblo can also be traced to Chávez and the 2001 Land Law, which opened the way for a revolution in the campo. In the early 2000s, Laura [Lorenzo], Gabriel [Gil], myself, and other comrades assumed spaces within the state’s agricultural bureaucracy in Yaracuy. From those posts, we were able to support campesino production: we distributed 10 thousand tractors, and we also promoted Decree 090.

Laura Lorenzo: Decree 090 is very much part of our history. It passed in 2004 and it was an instrument for activating the Land Law in two states: Cojedes and Yaracuy. The decree was a juridical but also a social instrument that allowed landless campesinos to recover land effectively.

In brief, the decree made the Land Law applicable. After a legal and technical review of a reclaimed plot of land, decree in hand, the people would go to a estate and take control of it. In Yaracuy alone, where we were working, 110 thousand hectares were recovered, and there was justice done for hundreds if not thousands of campesino families.

Ricardo Miranda: The years when we assumed government posts were learning ones, and they allowed us to have a full analysis of the campesino situation – or, to be more precise, of the campesino’s plight in capitalism. Along the path, we identified two bottlenecks: there is the issue of distribution, and then comes the issue of political education. Chávez was the great educator, but when he passed away, that space that he filled with his reflections was vacant.

In 2014 we [Miranda, Lorenzo, and Gil] left all our bureaucratic posts in order to work directly with campesinos, although we continued to cooperate with governmental institutions. Breaking that wall between the city and the campo was our guiding principle, but building a new kind of unalienated consciousness among campesinos and the urban working class was also a must.

That is when we took to the road and began to retrace the route of the Simón Bolivar Guerrillero Front, which rebelled against the corrupt government and against capital in the 1960s. Led by Argimiro Gabaldón, the guerrilla front operated in the states of Yaracuy, Portuguesa, Barinas, Lara, and Trujillo.

While looking for a territory where we could begin to build a just model for the production, distribution, and consumption of campesino production, we learned that all along the guerrilla’s territory, the front had organized the campesinos and encouraged the creation of rural savings banks. They also promoted the creation of co-ops and campesino leagues. That’s when we decided to figuratively piggyback on what the guerrilleros had done.

Retracing the guerrila’s historical route, we arrived to Carache, in the Tucamán Páramo [highland], in Trujillo state. In the 60s, Gabaldón had taken “Carache” as his nom de guerre. Five decades later we made Carache the epicenter of Plan Pueblo a Pueblo.

And so, in 2015, our official birth year, we began to rehearse what we call the “double participation ladder” [see part II of this interview], which brings producers and consumers together to do away with the capitalist intermediary. However, our history is intertwined with the struggles of all the campesinos oppressed by the land-devouring agricultural model that capitalism promotes.

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Part 2: Circumventing the Blockade

Here, in Part II, associate producers and spokespeople talk about the “Double Participation Ladder” method and about the impact of the US blockade.

Double Participation Ladder

The ladder image reflects Pueblo a Pueblo’s method for ensuring that rural producers and urban consumers are linked, thus breaking away from the centrifugal forces of the market.

Ricardo Miranda: The “Double Participation Ladder” is a method that interlinks and integrates rural producers and working-class city dwellers. By applying it, we are taking food outside of the market and put use-values – thus life – centerstage.

Ana Daniela Dávila: The Double Participation Ladder is about the integration of city people and campesinos, it’s about production, distribution, and consumption not being mediated by third parties, by capitalist interests, but being driven by the needs of organized communities.

In the Double Participation Ladder, production is planned on the basis of both the consumption needs in the city and the crop cycles in the campo. But the Double Participation Ladder is also about changing consumption patterns and about shifting away from conventional, toxic-based agriculture. That is why education is an important component of it.

Now, you may be asking, how do people move away from market consumption patterns that have been hammered into their heads generation after generation? How do campesinos shift away from the market-driven agricultural practices that have been hailed as the solution to all their problems for decades?

When Pueblo a Pueblo goes to a community, we talk with the people and hold assemblies. We also organize workshops on vermicompost [composting with worms], crop diversification, seed selection and care, crop rotation, food preservation, etc.

Rural producers won’t shift to organic production if they’re not offered an alternative to the corporate propaganda that Monsanto and other corporations spew out. It’s the same in the city: consumers will not shift away from processed foods if they are not offered an alternative, through education, to ever-present advertising.

However, it’s also very important that people get to know each other’s respective worlds, that producers and consumers know who is on the other end.

When Pueblo a Pueblo got started, people on the “consumption” end – for instance from San Agustín [a Caracas barrio] – would come to Carache to learn with the campesinos while campesinos would go to San Agustín to learn about the organizational processes there.

Pueblo a Pueblo is about organizing social production rationally, based on human needs.

Gabriel Gil: Planning is key for the Double Participation Ladder to work, and it has to happen on both ends: in the barrio, where the pueblo receives the produce, and in the campo, where the producers plans their production.

Also, we promote diversification of crops. This means that each producer should have four or more crops going at a time to reduce risks – risks that are both environmental and market-related.

We are committed to promoting an agroecological shift, which is in the interest of both the producer and the consumer, but not the market. That is why we organize workshops about seed production and organic fertilizers.

Finally – and this is key when it comes to the Ladder methodology – the “Consumers Network” organizes the distribution of the produce and processes payments in a swift manner. This is very important because the capitalist middleman can take a long time to pay the campesinos, which puts them in a very difficult situation.

Ricardo Miranda: The Double Participation Ladder breaks down the contradiction between the campo and the city that is prevalent in modern societies. The Ladder brings producers and city consumers close together. But, how does it do this exactly? The analysis that people carry out in their barrios and in their rural communities generates a “virtuous” circle that allows for the needs on both ends to be satisfied in human-based terms.

The process allows the campesino to farm based on people’s needs; he or she is not left at the whims of the market’s “invisible hand.” For us, food is not a commodity: it’s a fundamental human right. That’s why the price-setting processes in Pueblo a Pueblo are transparent ones and based on sustaining campesino life.

The concept of transparent prices is not to be confused with “fair” or “solidarious” prices, which are fuzzy concepts. When we talk about transparent prices, it’s because we know how much the campesino had to pay for seeds and inputs, what their overall expenses were, how much transportation costs, and how much will remain in the campesino’s hands after the sale. This is possible because our model is self-organized and there are no intermediaries or store owners involved.

The Double Participation Ladder is based on ethical principles, not on exploitation. Interestingly, when it comes to the plan’s ethical component, in the 260 or so food distribution operations that we have carried out since 2015, transactions have not been mediated by written documents and purchase orders. Instead, the exchanges are agreed upon through mutual trust.

Laura Lorenzo: In real terms, this is how the Ladder works: over the years we have worked with El Panal Commune in 23 de Enero [Caracas]. There, some 3000 families have participated in the Pueblo a Pueblo Plan by determining their own real needs collectively. Then the producers can in turn decide what is required in terms of land, seed, inputs, production cycles, etc. Simultaneously, we also have to plan how many silos will be needed, what will be the transportion requirements, how much fuel will be needed, and so on.

Food distribution has been a business for as long as we can remember. However, using our methodology, the four million kilos that we distributed between 2015 and 2020 got to the homes of working-class Venezuelans without passing through the market. The Double Participation Ladder is what allows for this to happen.

Pueblo a Pueblo in Carache

The founders of Pueblo a Pueblo made the small town of Carache in Trujillo state into their home base. Here Carache’s producers tell their stories.

María Godoy (a producer in Carache): When Pueblo a Pueblo made Carache its epicenter, the first thing they did was talk to the people and organize assemblies, but they also worked with the national government to repair the roads, which were in bad shape. Needless to say, having the roads well taken care of is critical for maintaining production.

Pueblo a Pueblo works with small to mid-size producers: they provide a positive distribution mechanism, seeds and inputs, and, importantly, they carry out workshops to shift away from commercial agricultural methods, which are harmful to the earth, to the producers, and to the consumers.

Josefa Zapata (a producer in Carache): As an associate producer with Pueblo a Pueblo, the main thing is to work responsibly. I am a single campesino woman, and I had to learn the trade on my own. In fact, I had to win the “right” to produce on my own land. Machismo is deeply ingrained here, so commanding respect from other producers didn’t happen overnight. I did this on my own, but I also had support from Pueblo a Pueblo.

When I became associated with Pueblo a Pueblo, my capacity to sell what I produce increased rapidly. They also taught me about producing seeds, and now my output is diversified: I produce celery, black beans, corn, tomato, spring onions, and broccoli. I also maintain a seedbed that has become an important part of my income. I produce both seeds and seedlings.

Returning to the issue of organization: producers associated with Pueblo a Pueblo meet every two weeks. In those meetings, we plan according to the requests made by our brothers and sisters in the city and the demand for food coming from schools, which we also provide through Pueblo a Pueblo.

Antonio Bracamonte (a producer in Carache and a spokesperson for the Bolívar and Chávez Commune): Pueblo a Pueblo established itself in Carache in the early days of the economic war, when obtaining seeds was beginning to be difficult. Pueblo a Pueblo helped us come together and break our dependency on the intermediary, who is the one who makes profits off of the campesino work. The practices of capitalist intermediaries are vicious. To give you an example, they may pay two bolívares per kilo for a truckload of celery, but when they get to Caracas the price tag is now 30 bolivars per kilo!

However, it is not possible to break away from depending on the intermediaries on one’s own. That’s where Pueblo a Pueblo enters the picture. As we say, a tree alone doesn’t make a forest. If we don’t organize, the market will swallow us up.

Chávez’s project is about empowering the pueblo. That is why organization is so important. When it comes to the rural areas, Chávez talked about campesinos having control of the land and of what they produce, but also about overcoming the logic of the market. Pueblo a Pueblo does precisely that – and not just with words! It does so with a method that works and that has grassroots organization as its cornerstone.

Luis Velázquez (a producer in Carache): Argimiro Gabaldón [guerrillero commander in the 1960s] and his front came through here: They walked this path [pointing at the road in front of his plot of land] and found much sympathy among the campesinos of Carache. Decades later, when Pueblo a Pueblo arrived, we were better able to collectively care for the “seeds” that Argimiro – and later Chávez – planted in this fertile ground.

Pueblo a Pueblo’s workshops helped us to shift away from harmful agricultural methods, promoted the organization of the communal councils and the commune, and radically improved the situation of producers by working with the government to fix the roads.

Trust

Laura Lorenzo: We who are organizers of the Pueblo a Pueblo project have our roots in the campesino struggle, but we come from the flatlands of Yaracuy, not from these mountains.

When we arrived here, we knew that we had to work hard to win the campesinos’ trust, so we talked to them about our dream of bringing down the wall that capitalism has built between the campo and the city to plunder the pueblo. Of course, the idea of doing away with the intermediary caught people’s imaginations, but we also had to show that it was not just empty talk.

The main thing about building trust is to honor agreements. In Pueblo a Pueblo, our “word” is sacred. When a truck departs loaded with produce, the campesinos know that they will be paid swiftly and fully. They also know that they can count on Pueblo a Pueblo if they have a problem, or that they can use one of the organization’s two tractors, and pay us back with seeds.

But Pueblo a Pueblo is not just about satisfying basic or elementary needs. Shortly after we arrived we discovered that people in Carache are really into poetry, theater, and music, so we began to build bridges through culture, organizing joropo dance workshops and other cultural events.

The impact of the blockade

The impact of the sanctions and the crisis has been devastating. Campesinos from Carache explain the damage produced by the US-led policies.

Josefa Zapata: Campesino life has never been easy, but the blockade made our lives even harder. For many of us, the two main bottlenecks have been getting agricultural inputs and transporting our produce. This means that over the past few years, production has dropped steeply. In my case, I lost a whole crop of spring onions.

However, the fact that we work with Pueblo a Pueblo has made us more resilient. On the one hand, I produce my own seeds. This is something that I learned with Gabriel Gil, who taught many of us how to care for seeds and how to build a nursery. On the other hand, he also taught us how to make organic fertilizers. That is one of the strengths of our organization: shifting away from commercial practices that make us dependent.

Laura Lorenzo: The crisis, the pandemic, and the blockade have hurt us a great deal in Pueblo a Pueblo. However, we have also learned that our model is a viable one, that it offers solutions for people, and it points in the right direction: food sovereignty.

The problems began around 2017, when the country’s fascist right wing set the east of Caracas on fire. At that time we were working with La Hidrológica de Chacao, a commune surrounded by guarimbas. That meant that we couldn’t get the produce to the commune. Then prices began to spiral up, including the prices of agricultural inputs, some of them were simply not to be found. Finally, fuel became scarce.

Fuel shortages are devastating for food production. Even though much of the work in the fields in Carache is done with animal traction, many crops were lost at the worst of the crisis. The situation is still serious. That’s why campesinos are demanding that the Venezuelan state assign them a special fuel quota. It is a just demand, but it’s also necessary to promote food sovereignty, which is all the more important in times of blockade.

Luis Velázquez: The sanctions caused a great deal of human devastation. For us, getting agricultural inputs and getting our produce to the market are the two key issues. At first, the inputs were nowhere to be found. Then, they began to pop up on the black market. Now, they are widely available, but at prices that are nearly inaccessible. For example, the production costs for a tomato crop could reach two to three-thousand-dollars, when you add up the costs of seeds, inputs, and work.

We do have one advantage, however: Pueblo a Pueblo. Without that organization, our roads would be in terrible shape, which would reduce our production significantly. Pueblo a Pueblo also accompanies producers in shifting away from commercial, toxic agricultural practices.

These years have been harrowing, but Venezuela is a rich country. If we work hard and organize, we’ll be able to get out of the hole. But there is something else that is required. While we cannot expect the imperialist enemy to lighten the blockade, we should expect the government to promote campesino production.

We are the ones – and not the big food conglomerates – who feed the Venezuelan pueblo. What does this actually mean? The state should develop policies so that campesinos can get inputs and fuel. Also, the government should help Pueblo a Pueblo and other organizations that work with small and mid-size producers so that our crops can reach the homes of working-class people.

For a campesino, there is no satisfaction greater than producing good, healthy food, and that it gets to families that – rain or shine – have decided to stay here in Venezuela.

Antonio Bracamonte: The blockade has put us to ”work with our nails” [with nothing]. For example, I used to plant 10,000 heads of celery, but now we are down to 1,000. Overall, I am at 25% of my productive capacity, but there were times when production dropped down to zero. It was tragic. At those times, it was the conuco [subsistence farming plot] that kept us alive.

Operating costs are too high. That, in turn, has social costs for my family, my community, and the country as a whole.

The blockade is cruel and the Venezuelan opposition is heartless. Of course, the United States wanted to topple our government and to apply sanctions, but they couldn’t have done so without a puppet like [former self-appointed “President” Juán] Guaidó and his mafia. They were the ones who requested the blockade from the White House. We’ll never forget that!

The United States is a decadent empire and, as such, it will do anything to maintain its political, economic, and military hegemony. That is why its policies are so brutal. However, we are a strong people, and we are committed to staying here – in the country of Bolívar and Chávez – even if we have to eat tree roots!

Ana Daniela Dávila: The blockade and the pandemic had a devastating impact on production, but in Pueblo a Pueblo we are always optimistic.

The crisis also has a positive side: the fact that purchasing agrochemical packages is really difficult has generated great interest in agroecological practices, and Pueblo a Pueblo has made headway with its workshops teaching such methods.

Then, there are ancestral practices such as the conuco, which saved many lives in rural areas.

Carmen Marquina (a producer in Carache): They [the US] attacked where it hurts most: limiting the country’s capacity to produce its own food. You might say: campesinos in Carache have their own land and they plow the fields with horses or oxen, so the fact that Venezuela can’t sell oil shouldn’t affect them. However, that’s not true! Campesino production doesn’t happen in a bubble. We are here in El Potrero, a small community kilometers away from Carache. If there is no fuel, we can’t take our produce to town or go to the doctor.

But then, there is also the problem of dollarization, which hits small producers like a meteor. Production costs skyrocketed. We grow onions here, and our output dropped to about half of what it was. Since the war began, we have had many losses.

Then there are the social aspects of the crisis. We keep the school open through sheer willpower: the communal council helps the teacher. This is very important because teachers’ wages are not living wages. There is also a problem with keeping the kids schooled through high school. The high school is far away and, at a time when fuel is unavailable, youths end up dropping out.

Nadia Linares (a producer in Carache): When people ask us about the impact of the blockade, we often talk about the dollarization of inputs and about gas prices, which have risen sometimes to two and three dollars per liter [the official price is 50 cents]. All that made production drop drastically, but we seldom talk about other aspects of life.

The blockade has caused many kids to drop out of school, because getting to the educational centers is harder and many teaching posts are vacant. Access to healthcare and medical treatment is also very difficult because of high costs. Things as common as giving birth become an ordeal with the hospital being kilometers away. Recently, for example, a compañera who had begun labor had to go to the hospital on a motorcycle.

For these reasons, many have left Carache. They migrate to Colombia or to other countries where they think their conditions will improve. Of course, it’s understandable, but we are staying here. Cahingó [in the Carache municipality] is a beautiful valley, and this is where we want to raise our children.

Ronald Moreno (a producer in Carache): People live humbly but with dignity here. While the life of the campesino is not easy, it’s worth the hardship. In fact, my story goes against the grain, but it’s not the only one.

I was living in Barquisimeto [a city four hours away from Carache], and I decided to retrace my steps back here to farm with my parents a few years ago. At the end of the day, we may not eat as much meat as we would like to, but we aren’t going to die of starvation if we live here in the campo.

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Part 3: Agroecology for Life

In Part III, Pueblo a Pueblo participants talk to us about the transition to a sovereign, agroecological model.

A model for sovereignty

Conventional, chemical-intensive agriculture generates dependency on external corporate interests. That’s one reason why Pueblo a Pueblo promotes an agroecological transition.

Laura Lorenzo: Chávez’s project is about building a sovereign socialist society and, in these times of blockade, this has become even more important. That’s why we stand firm with the Chavista project, and we work hard to promote food sovereignty outside of the capitalist market.

Pueblo a Pueblo is about food sovereignty from below: about building a distribution and consumption system that ensures that campesinos and consumers are linked and their needs satisfied within a framework that is not simply material, but also sovereign and social.

The market is driven by interests that are never truly national and never collective. We should acknowledge that being a highly dependent country has made us more vulnerable to the imperialist blockade. That’s why developing a method that promotes national, campesino production – without imported seeds and without agrochemicals – is so important.

One more thing: agribusiness is never conducive to sovereignty. Why? Not only is agribusiness highly dependent on imported agricultural inputs, but it’s also driven by the needs of the international market, not by the needs of the country.

Overcoming “Rentierism”

Gabriel Gil: We believe that the funds derived from the oil rent should be used for sectors like healthcare and education, and also for building a new productive model. That model should overcome rent dependency, be sovereign, and be heedful of human life. In the twentieth century, the so-called international division of labor turned Venezuela into an oil monoproducer. In economic terms, this kind of arrangement is based on exporting crude oil and, in turn, importing foodstuffs and other goods. Naturally, this leads to processes of deindustrialization and depeasantation.

But our “rentierism” isn’t limited to fossil fuel production. Even as we speak, industrial mono-production is on the rise in the countryside. That kind of agricultural production obeys a rationality that goes against campesino and Indigenous practices that preserve the land’s health.

In our struggle to overcome the current system, we have to recover ancestral rationalities. Why are 20 thousand Yanomamis [Indigenous nation in the Venezuelan and Brazilian Amazon] claiming three million hectares? Because they want to heal their ancestral lands. Why are campesinos claiming the tenancy of idle lands? Because they want to produce and, in so doing, stop the expansion of agroindustrial, fossil fuel-based agriculture.

The official discourse is critical of rentierism, and it acknowledges that the model is exhausted. This is good, but discourse and action must go hand in hand! In fact, agro-industrial practices are being promoted and are actually on the rise here. Unfortunately, these practices are “rentier” ones, which deepen fossil fuel dependency.

To overcome rentierism, we must also recover the territories currently dedicated to conventional, capitalist agriculture. That’s not easy because the use of agrochemicals is so widespread in Latin America, and not just in large-scale agro-industrial undertakings. In fact, the use of toxic chemical packages on family farms is also ingrained.

It’s time to transition to an agroecological model that is diversified, independent, and post-rentier. The state must do its part, and grassroots and communal organizations must do their part too.

“Papa Para La Vida, No Para El Capital” [Potatoes For Life, Not For Capital]

Laura Lorenzo: When producers depend on seeds that come from abroad, the nation’s social, political, and economic integrity falls apart. For that reason, one of Pueblo a Pueblo’s interests is seed production. That’s where the project called “Papa para la vida, no para el capital” enters the picture. This is a project that Pueblo a Pueblo has developed hand in hand with PROINPA, a campesino association with a high-end seed laboratory in the Andean highlands.

PROINPA plays an important role in promoting national sovereignty, as far as seeds are concerned. They produce potato seeds that are adapted to the region, and they maintain a seed bank that is of strategic importance for the nation.

Beyond this, people associated with PROINPA produce potatoes. Like most campesinos around the country, they have to rely on intermediaries who buy their crops at very low prices. Then, when their production gets to market, the markup is huge.

“Papa para la vida” [Potatoes for life] is an initiative that began around 2018. It allows PROINPA and Pueblo a Pueblo to control the whole cycle of potato production – all the way from the seed potatoes to consumption. That’s food sovereignty in a nutshell!

Now, we should recognize that “Papa para la vida” is at a standstill now. The economic situation in general, and especially COVID lockdown, had a negative impact on the project, but we hope to reactivate it in the next few months.

Antonio Bracamonte: It used to be that potato seeds would be imported from Canada. We would buy the package at subsidized prices from Agropatria [state-owned distributor of agricultural inputs]. Then, when the blockade descended upon us, we realized that we were dependent: we couldn’t grow our own ancestral crop!

“Papa para la vida” began to turn this situation around. Hand in hand with PROINPA, we started to grow both seed potatoes and potatoes for consumption. In so doing we began to increase Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Ana Daniela Dávila: Venezuela used to buy seed potatoes from Canada, and we used to rely on Monsanto and other transnationals to get agricultural inputs for the crop.

That was a weak flank, and the enemy used it to attempt to bring Venezuela to its knees. Among many other problems, the blockade made potatoes – which are an important part of our diet – very scarce.

“Papa para la vida” allows campesinos to break away from dependence on foreign seed potatoes by bringing PROINPA’s long-standing scientific work together with Pueblo a Pueblo’s capacity to distribute outside the market.

Between 2018 and 2020, we distributed 160 to 210 thousand kilos of potatoes per year. That’s why we say that “Papa para la vida” pushes back against the capitalist market and takes us in the direction of food sovereignty. Through this initiative, potatoes are now in the hands of the pueblo – from the seed to the table!

The Agroecological Transition

Gabriel Gil: Taking the land from large landowners is completely just, but if production continues to be organized according to the conventional, mono-producing logic that capitalist corporations impose, we will not only deplete and sicken the earth, but also continue to be dependent on the market… And food sovereignty will evade us!

When the Seed Law was promoted in 2015, many said that shifting away from genetically-modified seeds was naive. In the end, as it turns out, the US blockade itself limited Venezuela’s access to conventional agricultural inputs: from transgenic and modified seeds to agricultural chemicals. If we had transitioned away from conventional agriculture before, the blockade would have had a smaller impact.

Even if the impact of the sanctions is devastating, we have learned a great deal along the way. The most important thing from our perspective is a gradual shift toward organic inputs among campesinos. These alternatives are cheaper and less harmful, and they are also more sovereign.

Some people are now making and using earthworm humus as a fertilizer and implementing crop rotation and diversification. Further, there is a move away from conventional pesticides. Right now, the conventional fungicides for tomatoes sold by ecocidal corporations costs about US $1500 per acre! By contrast, we have a self-produced mineral compound composed of copper sulfate and lime [sulfocalcium broth]. It’s just as efficient, far less harmful to the campesino and the earth, and requires an investment of only about $100 per acre.

Finally, when it comes to the agroecological transition, there is the problem of indoctrination: Bayer and Monsanto spend hundreds of millions in advertising campaigns every year. Consequently, many producers think that shifting away from pesticides is simply suicidal. However, as it turns out, when the use of pesticides was much lower in the 1960s, the loss of production due to pests was around 32%. By contrast, the current loss rate, with ample use of pesticides, is up to 37%. We must do better at educating producers.

Antonio Bracamonte: Industrial farming depletes the land of nutrients, while campesino agriculture tries to preserve it for future generations. After thirty years of using agrochemicals, the land becomes barren. Agroecological practices return nutrients to the soil by fallowing the land, crop rotation, and the use of sulfocalcium broth which doesn’t kill pollinating insects.

Little by little, we are shifting away from the predatory agriculture model, and we are doing so with help from Pueblo a Pueblo. But this is not just about the land: agrochemicals hurt the producers as well. The effects are not experienced overnight – unless we get direct exposure and acute poisoning – but over the long run, the chemicals lead to respiratory, skin, and central nervous system disorders that can be deadly.

Luis Velázquez: Transitioning away from agrochemicals isn’t easy, but we are going in the right direction. One of the problems is that a “patchwork” transition can emerge: If I don’t use agrochemicals but my neighbor does, that impacts my production. That’s why there has to be a wide cultural shift, and that’s why organizations such as Pueblo a Pueblo play such an important role.

Collective action for Popular Agroecology

Reciprocity and solidarity are in the DNA of campesino life and, as Pueblo a Pueblo works to promote an agroecological transition, these practices become all the more important.

Gabriel Gil: We often use a term coined by Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán of the Campesino Studies Institute [Spanish state] to talk about our strategic goal: popular agroecology. The term refers to the ecological use of natural resources through collective social action.

Popular agroecology involves the recovery of both campesino and Indigenous lands, territories, and also practices made invisible by modern agriculture. Popular agroecology shouldn’t be confused with the high-end consumption of organic produce, which is accessible to only a privileged few. Popular agroecology is about rebuilding communities, the communalization of life, and producing healthy food to satisfy working people’s needs.

But a widespread shift to popular agroecology won’t happen by sheer goodwill. That’s why our proposal is that the Venezuelan state employ its limited resources to produce organic agricultural inputs. Established during Chávez’s time, the Integral Agricultural Health Institute [INSAI] has 33 labs for developing and producing bio-inputs. Unfortunately, commercial interest groups have repurposed some of those labs to produce chemical inputs that are accessible only to large-scale, agribusiness interests.

As Pueblo a Pueblo, we have a counterproposal: neither state control nor private control. There should be popular control of these strategic labs. After all, our small to mid-sized producers are feeding the country, so we should be in control of the labs. Venezuela’s multi-factorial crisis offers us the best conditions for an agroecological transition.

Reciprocity

Gabriel Gil: In Carache [Pueblo a Pueblo’s home base in Trujillo state] – and in general in campesino territories – there are ancestral forms of collective labor that are important to building an agroecological future. Here, mutual aid practices such as “mano vuelta” [giving a hand] and “convite” [invite] are alive and well.

But what are these practices really about? The convite is a solidarious practice in which five or more families get together for a task that would be very hard to carry out alone. But most often, the convite does not just bring people together: “yuntas” [teams of oxen] are important to this already-existing communal practice.

Those organizing a convite have certain obligations: they should offer a hearty sancocho [stew] and a cocuy [homemade liquor] macerated with “dítamo real” [a plant with curative properties] to the participants. The day will also usually end with songs and even dancing.

Mano vuelta is like the convite but on a smaller scale. For example, if some work has to be done in my field and I need help, I will often turn to a neighbor or a friend. Later, when he or she needs help, I will go to their field and lend a hand.

Something important about both convite and mano vuelta practices is that they never involve the application of toxic pesticides or fertilizers. If producers want help with that, they will have to pay for the service. In other words, these traditional practices go hand in hand with a worldview that is respectful of human life and nature.

Finally, there’s the cayapa, which is not about care for the land itself, but about the community getting together to fix a road, communal truck, school or public square.

The mano vuelta, the convite, and the cayapa are campesino and Indigenous practices that capitalism has not been able to roll back. They are founded on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and community integration. While they come from the past, they help us think about a better future.

Italo Román (a producer in Carache): The convite and mano vuelta involve me helping you and knowing that you will help me later on. In other words, these are practices involving reciprocity that also help us build a harmonious community.

These practices, which were handed down to us by our grandparents, can also be applied to building a road or a school. I remember that a while back, the communal council got funding to fix this camino [pointing at a well-cared-for road].

The town’s mayor wanted us to contract a cooperative that was in the hands of some private interests. But we didn’t trust those folks, so we decided that we would appeal to people in the community to do the work. Indeed, that’s how we repaired the road, and I’m sure that that decision was key in making the resources go further.

(Cira Pascual Marquina is Political Science professor at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas. Chris Gilbert teaches Marxist political economy at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. Courtesy: Venezuela Analysis, an independent website produced by individuals who are dedicated to disseminating news and analysis about the current political situation in Venezuela.)